by Anna Windsor
“I can’t—fuck!” Andy exploded out of her silence, jarring the room’s stillness with a frenetic blur of motion and spraying cooling raindrops as she stormed around the table. “We can’t just assume he’s an ally. Y’all put every other demon mix we’ve worked with through a lot more testing than this.”
“He kicked a Vodoun god’s ass on our behalf,” Dio reminded her. “Probably spared you another couple of facefuls of pig blood.”
“Screw off,” Andy snarled at Dio, but Bela’s expression said she was agreeing with Andy even though Ona was still creeping her out in a major way.
“He’s an ally.” Camille kept hold of Ona’s fingers, and with her free hand, she helped Bela absorb and return Andy’s renegade water. Then Camille just looked at Dio, Andy, and Bela like she was waiting for them to get the hell on with getting him down already.
Obviously, none of them was used to her taking such an assertive role.
John wondered what kind of trouble that would cause, and how much of it had to do with him.
Camille’s attitude seemed to do the trick, though, because while Andy grumbled to herself, she stopped fussing. The other two didn’t seem like the fuss-in-your-face type. John figured Bela would sneak up from behind with a dagger to the throat, and Dio, hell, nobody would see her coming.
“You and Maggie,” Bela said to Camille. “And you and—and John here. And Ona. And how you’re feeling right now. We need to talk about all of this.”
“I know.” Camille’s eyes shifted back to John’s, and he felt her gaze like a touch. A slap. A rake of fingernails down his back. Whatever. He didn’t care, as long as he could look at her, too.
Andy laughed, then groaned. “Oh, Christ, I’m not up for some huge exposé, even if the dirty parts are too hot for prime time. I need, like, five more baths to get the pig blood out from under my nails, and then I need some sleep.”
“Later, then,” Bela said, her black eyes boring into Camille. “After we rest and check in with other patrols and the OCU to see if there was any Rakshasa activity tonight.”
Camille nodded without returning Bela’s gaze. She was still staring at John, her expression a wild mix of power and curiosity and something else—intrigue? Fear? He didn’t want her afraid of him. John knew he had a lot to learn in order to understand her, and a lot to do to teach her to trust him—and he wanted to take every lesson seriously.
“You staying?” she asked, and her question made everything in the room go away again, everything except her pretty face and the way her lips parted just enough for him to imagine running his thumb across the warm, damp skin.
He wasn’t sure he could form words, but he managed, “If that’s what you want.”
Camille studied him from meat hook to ankle cuff. Another touch, this one slower and more deliberate, demanding every bit of his self-control not to let his body react to her right there in front of everybody. He could tell from the hot burn in her eyes that she knew she was in charge where he was concerned, that she had him in the kind of cuffs and chains a real man with real feelings never escaped.
Hell, he didn’t even think he wanted to.
An excruciating second or two later, she said, “You can use my room.”
John dug his fingers into the chains binding him to the meat hook. God, he hoped she’d be in it.
“Don’t” was all Camille said to her sister Sibyls, who didn’t seem to be inclined to argue with her about him again—at least not yet.
( 14 )
Camille kept it together in front of the Mothers.
Barely.
She helped her quad give a full report, but the second the old biddies winked out of the mirrors, she slammed the communications channels shut with a fast dance and jumped off the platform. Before anybody could say boo to her, she stormed out of the living room, almost tripping over the chains and cuffs Dio had pulled off John Cole when she turned him loose.
Nobody was stupid enough to follow Camille, thank the Goddess. Besides, their neighbor Mrs. Knight was banging on the front door to find out what the hell was going on thanks to all the smoke and fire and elemental energy flying around. Dio and Andy and Bela would be busy dealing with her for a while.
A few seconds later, Camille stood alone in the kitchen, listening to the swinging door bounce open and closed behind her, open and closed, open and closed, until it lost momentum.
She tried to breathe.
Too little. Too quiet. Too weak.
Right.
Well, she was making some big, noisy, powerful waves now, and she didn’t think anybody liked it.
The Mothers sure as hell weren’t happy about this new Rakshasa-human hybrid or, more to the point, that the dangerous mix of human and demon named John Cole preserved Strada’s essence. Even better, the whole mess had been created by a Sibyl.
Bela, Dio, and Andy seemed a million miles away from her right now, even though they were with Ona in the living room just a few feet away. Camille knew it was her own fault that they suddenly felt so distant. She hadn’t told them everything about last year before it all came spilling out. She hadn’t told them much about her childhood and her fights with other fire Sibyls like Maggie, and she hadn’t ever mentioned Ona, had she?
She’d barely told them anything about herself. Her real self. The Camille under all the littleness, quietness, and weakness.
How many secrets had she been keeping? She had thought it was just the one about Strada and John Cole and what had happened in the alley, but even that felt like dozens of part truths and unspoken opinions all rolled into one.
We need to talk, Bela had said.
Was that shorthand for I’ve had enough of your bullshit and surprises?
Probably.
“What have I done?” Camille asked the question out loud and hated the words, because she’d been asking herself the same thing over and over for a year, since the night John Cole “died.”
She kept trying to breathe without her chest crushing in on itself.
Maybe Ona was keeping Bela and Andy and Dio entertained with tales of underground Motherhouse Ireland and Camille’s amazing, thrilling career as a punching bag for the older training classes until Ona fought her battles for her and put a stop to all the teasing. Great. That would so help everybody trust her judgment and fighting prowess, right?
And down the steps from the kitchen, in the bedroom on the right, John Cole, the really-really-not-dead guy, the flesh-and-blood handsome man she couldn’t forget about even for a second, was probably already stretching out to rest from his nasty encounter with the executioner’s sword. Camille had a few scars from that frigging sword herself, because wounds from psychotically possessed blades didn’t heal so well.
John was probably on her bed. Or maybe he was washing off, naked and steamy and covered in lather. In her shower. Giving him her room had been a brilliant idea. Really stellar. From dead soldier to ghost to demon-man to what—houseguest with benefits? Gorgeous, squeezable potential bed warmer with just that teensy problem of a Rakshasa demon hanging out in his brain?
“Stop it.” Camille winced as her words made an unbearable clatter in the kitchen’s quiet. Her neck was so tight she thought her head might shatter if she tried to move.
Ve aren’t in the habit of making our own demons, Mother Yana from Russia had announced after Camille gave her part of the report. The Mother’s brown robes fell loose against her ancient, gnarled limbs, and she reminded Camille of a tiny little hanging tree.
Mother Anemone from Greece had been a little more conciliatory: Sibyl experiments of such magnitude can be dangerous at best.
What, like Camille had planned to yank a spirit out of a dying guy and stuff it in a demon’s body?
It’s that infernal piece of jewelry, Mother Keara had reminded her, pointing to the dinar, which the Mothers had never officially approved for use. A Sibyl shouldn’t be needin’ a piece of funny metal to fight.
Fuck you, you fire-breathing old dragon hag. T
hat’s what Camille had been thinking, but she didn’t say it. Her silence had been almost as disrespectful.
The Mothers also hadn’t approved of the unique projective metal charms Camille had painstakingly constructed for the rest of her quad to help them fight Rakshasa last year, or the fact that Camille and her quad used projective elemental energy instead of more traditional—and respected—Sibyl talents.
When she didn’t take off the dinar or defend the fact that the “funny metal” also just happened to repel Rakshasa demons—the only thing her charms couldn’t do—she had as much told the Mothers she didn’t care what they thought. Bela and Dio and Andy had done the same, leaving their charms in place.
Camille’s breathing finally did slow down, though she was still hot enough to throw flames though the roof.
The whole thing with the projective coin and charms, that was the crux of it. The Mothers thought sentient talents were barely an inch above useless. It was so obvious that they didn’t want anything to do with what Camille was exploring, yet they still seemed hesitant to outright forbid Camille, Bela, Andy, and Dio to develop their projective gifts. They were settling for Look at all the damage you caused this time—wouldn’t you rather fight like a real Sibyl?
Like she was five years old and they wanted her to have an aha moment and promise to be more careful and never, ever do it again. Her, and maybe her whole quad.
Nobody was going for it.
Mother Keara always pissed her off most of all, but at least the old witch had gotten a start when she noticed Ona hanging out beside the leather sofa. Ona, who seemed so wonderful to Camille but so terrifying to everybody else.
Camille sighed.
Her anger burned out of her completely, replaced by a devil’s brew of fear and doubt.
Really, I have to ask it again: What have I done?
Well, for one thing, she had gone and picked a brand-new fight with Maggie Cregan, and over a man, no less. The last thing Camille had ever wanted to do was start all the old childhood wars over again, least of all with Maggie, who had come to be a pretty good friend, at least in battle.
She can screw off, too, the angry-kid part of Camille’s mind snarled. She always has been a bitch. She and that sword truly deserve each other.
True enough, but not productive. They were adults now, and Camille had to remember that, no matter what else happened.
She moved toward the steps to the basement, acknowledging that on top of everything else she’d probably freaked out her quad by being so angry, confrontational, and crazy-sounding with Maggie when they’d never seen that side of her personality. Yep, she’d probably done a fine job of confusing, confounding, and worrying the three women who cared most about her, and now she was running away downstairs to Bela’s lab before she had to talk to any of them about it. They loved her enough to let her do it, of course. And of course, that just made Camille feel worse.
Don’t forget Ona, her mind whispered as she slipped out of the kitchen.
Oh, yeah. There was that, too. She’d also just brought a strange fire Sibyl into the mix. A really old one who had a mysterious talent for scaring the shit out of everybody she met, not to mention the legends that Ona had done something horrible in her distant past. Camille had never asked her about that. Not that she’d answer, of course.
Camille headed down the stairs, not sure if Ona would follow her or just materialize in the lab later. She really wanted to understand how Ona did that, but she could ask Ona questions until she turned purple from the effort and never get any information. Ona was a lesson in patience. The old woman would share her secrets when she was good and ready, but not before.
Not looking at the bedroom, not looking at the bedroom …
Doing her best to keep her mind on anything but what was behind that door, she made it past temptation with a burst of speed, relieved and disappointed at the same time, and she was almost to the lab when she heard the soft whoosh of the door opening behind her.
The quiet but powerful sound of male footsteps followed shortly afterward, coming a short distance, then stopping.
Waiting.
Camille stopped, too, every inch of her skin prickling with warmth and excitement.
He was standing in the hall. Had to be. She sensed him like a dark field of power, magnetic and dangerous, pulling her toward its center.
“Thank you for your help upstairs.” John Cole’s voice hit that low register that doubled the prickles on her skin.
Camille didn’t turn around, but she wanted to—no, no, she didn’t. She couldn’t. She was busy running away, and she never stopped when she was running.
Did she?
“You’re, ah, welcome,” she got out, though she had no idea how she’d made herself talk.
Silence opened in the dimly lit basement hallway, and Camille wished John would keep talking so he wouldn’t notice her fast, shallow breathing.
He obliged. “Any word on the Rakshasa tonight?”
Good. Something normal and easy. “Sibyl patrols came up empty.” Camille felt a little stupid talking with her back to the man, but she couldn’t quite make herself turn around yet. “The OCU reported some increased criminal activity near the docks—mostly merchandise movement from the newer Balkan gangs. Nothing supernatural that they could find.”
“It would be like Tarek to hook himself up with organized crime.” John’s cadence was unmistakably military or law enforcement now, straightforward and certain. “Strada was trying to do something like that before he got distracted with torturing and murdering women. We should look into the Balkan groups a little deeper, maybe see if there’s been an unusual number of high-level hits.”
His voice gave Camille tingles everywhere, even though he was talking shop. He seemed to notice, or maybe he was just zeroing in on the fact she wouldn’t turn around to face him.
“I know it was backward, touching souls before we even got to meet in person,” he said, his voice dropping impossibly lower, until her skin hummed with each word. “What happened in the alley, it made us more familiar with each other than we should be.”
That deep voice felt like fingers gently stroking the back of her neck. Camille swallowed, but her throat was so dry she almost coughed. The man got right to the point, didn’t he? Well, she was a fire Sibyl. She wasn’t bad at getting to the point, either.
“I don’t know you, John.” She relaxed a little as she spoke. The truth had a way of doing that, easing tension even in the strangest circumstances. “No matter what happened in that alley, I really don’t know you at all.”
“Yes, you do. And I get that it makes you uncomfortable.”
Camille wanted to double her fists, turn around, and sock him so hard in the gut that he couldn’t catch his breath for an hour or two.
Yes, you do.…
She’d heard that before, and it was true, damn him, even though it wasn’t, in that confusing reality that had existed between them since she—
Created him?
Saved him?
That was confusing, too, but none of it made him uncomfortable. She could tell. Bastard. If she could have made fire, she’d have turned around and blistered his ass just so he’d feel as jumpy as she did.
There were other ways to set fires, though. Plenty of them.
Camille wheeled to face John Cole.
He was standing just outside her bedroom door, just like she had imagined he would be—but he looked even better than she had dreamed. A single lamp glowed inside the room, spilling soft yellow light into the hallway to highlight the lean, tanned muscle of his bare chest. His jeans looked damp where he’d probably mopped off battle grime and the soot from his questioning upstairs. The denim hugged his tapered waist and powerful thighs in ways that made Camille want to press herself against every inch. His black hair, longer in the front than the back, shorter on the sides, curled toward his shoulders with the moisture from his shower. Touchable and soft, no doubt. Enough to run her fingers through. Enough
to pull when he bit her neck or held her tight against all that hard muscle.
The heat in his deep green eyes made her aware of the thin layer of silk covering her own body. The soft fabric rubbed against her tight nipples and clung to her belly and hips. Her legs felt bare and exposed.
John’s gaze let her know he’d like to expose everything else, maybe peel that silk off her with his teeth. He didn’t even try to hide the desire on his face.
Camille didn’t know whether to be furious or flattered or more intrigued, but that was her brain talking. Her body was excited, pure and simple, no questions asked. The distance between them suddenly seemed obscenely wrong, and she went straight toward him, not too fast, not too slow, and the truth of getting closer to him made more tension flow away from her in warm, soothing waves.
Even though Camille was no stranger to men, she was strange to this man, and he was strange to her, but as she got close to him, she felt that stirring, comfortable rightness that had rattled her each time she’d been near him.
John waited for her, reached for her, and she let him pull her close, let him wrap his heavy, powerful arms around her and hold her against the carved ridges of his chest. The dinar around her neck felt warm between them, vibrating ever so slightly, like the metal was trying to join to both of them at the same time.
He smelled like the plain, clean soap she kept in her bathroom to use when scented body wash just didn’t feel right. Hints of his spicy aftershave were faint, showered and scrubbed away, but delicious as she stood on her toes and pressed first one cheek against his neck, then the other. She slid her fingers across his pecs to his shoulders, then to his stubbled cheeks and higher, exploring, into his hair, yes, as soft as she’d thought it would be, still damp and cool from the shower. Her lips moved upward like she had touched him a thousand times, like she knew just how high she’d have to lift herself to reach him as he bent to meet her.
She kissed him, and the first touch, damp skin on damp skin, mouth on mouth, set loose a fire inside her like Camille had never felt in her life.
